State faults substance abuse program oversight

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A state report this week concludes the department in charge of regulating residential drug and alcohol programs “consistently failed to catch life-threatening problems.”

The report by the California Senate Office of Oversight and Outcomes focuses on a handful of serious cases, one of them being the Bay Recovery Center in San Diego that the Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs closed in July.

The report said the department allowed the program to stay open despite the fact that the director, a doctor, faced serious accusations and license revocation by the Medical Board of California.

“The department acknowledges the critical issues addressed in this report and takes it seriously,” said spokeswoman Suzi Rupp. “We remain committed to protecting the health and safety of all clients served in the facilities we license and will take all appropriate action within our authority to do so. We look forward to working productively with the Legislature, counties, stakeholders, consumers, and other state departments to continually improve California’s substance use disorder treatment system.”

According to the report, the state medical board alleged that Dr. Jerry Rand had engaged in “extreme polypharmacy” — prescribing multiple medications with inadequate care for possible interactions — in his treatment of a 29-year-old woman who drowned in a bathtub in 2008.

“The Medical Board alleged that in 2008 Rand was accepting clients who were too sick to be there. But for four years, the record does not indicate that the (Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs) conducted its own investigation of that charge,” the report says.

Rand could not be located for this story and his attorney, David Balfour, did not return email and telephone messages left for him this week.

After a 28-year-old man died earlier this year at one of Bay Recovery’s three residential treatment center’s, all in the Bay Park neighborhood of San Diego, the department concluded Bay Recovery had failed to refer the client to a higher level of care even though he had been disoriented and hallucinating for several days.

In late June all three drug treatment homes as well as the center’s administrative office and Rand’s home were raided by state and federal officials and in mid-July the department suspended Bay Recovery’s inpatient license and ordered all patients moved within a week.

The clinic can still provide outpatient services under the suspension.

The report, titled “Rogue Rehabs: State Failed to Police Drug and Alcohol Homes, with Deadly Results,” includes further information about Bay Recovery and Rand.

It says Rand was barred from practicing medicine for a time in the 1980s because of substance abuse problems. He was accused of treating patients while clearly impaired. He regained his license, but in 2002, the medical board put him on probation for seven years for what it deemed incompetent treatment of patients several years earlier.

Then came the bathtub incident and other accusations that he overmedicated three other clients. The medical board also found that Rand prescribed himself controlled substances by having one of his workers call in the prescription under the name of another Bay Recovery doctor without that doctor’s knowledge.

“While current law makes it very difficult for the Medical Board to suspend a physician’s license when a case is pending, the Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs is under no such constraint in taking action against a program run by a doctor,” the report states.

Denise Stent, the executive administrator of Bay Recovery, said the business has no comment.

The oversight report concludes that the Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs has taken steps in the past two years to identify and crack down on problem programs, which account for a small minority of the state’s roughly 800 treatment homes.

The department’s licensing responsibilities are slated to be handed over to another department on July 1, 2013.

“The Senate report calls for bills and regulations to prevent a return to a legacy of spotty enforcement,” the report concludes.